Deal funds highways, airways

Congressional leaders struck a deal late Friday to extend temporarily the expiring laws governing the nation’s highways and airways at roughly their current funding levels.

The bill would authorize programs of the Federal Aviation Administration through January and surface transportation laws through March. Highway programs would be funded at the fiscal 2011 rate — $41.7 billion — far above the $27 billion approved in their budget earlier this year. Because the extension is for six months and not a full year, the actual amount authorized is half of the fiscal 2011 level. The FAA would get about $5.4 billion for the four-month period beginning in October and ending Jan. 31.

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Without action, authorization for both highway and aviation programs would expire at the end of this month, and both President Barack Obama and members of Congress have warned that scenario could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) secured an agreement from GOP leaders to find revenue later to ensure that the money spent from the highway trust fund on the short-term extension does not leave him without the funds necessary to win approval of a long-term reauthorization of surface transportation laws next year, according to a GOP source.

The deal intertwined two short-term extensions of transportation laws that had been moving on separate tracks earlier in the day.

The higher funding level for highway programs may cause heartburn with House and Senate conservatives, but transportation projects generally win support from both Republicans and Democrats, in part because they are an easy way to show folks back home that they are bringing jobs and infrastructure to their districts.

The text of the 47-page bill was posted to the House Rules Committee website late Friday night, meaning it is likely to be considered on the floor early next week.

The legislation does not include retroactive pay for FAA workers who were furloughed, according to the GOP source. But Mica had planned to take care of that in an earlier draft of the FAA extension, and it is likely there will be a push in both chambers to make sure the workers don’t lose out on that pay.